Review of 27 Dresses (2008) by Peter P — 08 Oct 2010

Not a bad movie, actually. I always thought that Katherine Heigl was a decent actress and was glad when she made it out of the Disney/B-Movie ghetto. This movie also features Cyclops and the dude from "Entourage".

Summary: Katherine Heigl (Jane) is an eternal bridesmaid who is never a bride. She's been a bridesmaid/wedding planner at 27 weddings. She really likes her boss George (Edward Burns), who doesn't return her affection. A cynical, marriage/wedding-hating newspaper columnist Kevin (James Marsdenâ??a.k.a. "Cyclops" from "X-Men") who writes wedding notices, by the way, meets herâ??and then decides to make a front-page story out of her and her life.

Jane's sister Tess comes back to America from Europe, and by chance meets George, and the two of them fall in love...emotionally crushing Jane, who has also been enlisted to plan her sister's wedding...talk about AWK-WARD!! Tess also angers Jane by altering their mother's wedding dress to the point of unrecognizability. So, in the meantime, Jane eventually falls for the somewhat douchy writer Kevin (after initially hating his creepy, egotistical, bitter self) as he's doing research for his story (which he completes and submits for publishing), they end up get stranded in a small upstate NY town, and then sleep together (hey, why not?). The next morning of course, Jane reads the story about herself in the newspaper (which is a put-down of her) and is über-pissed at Kevin.

Tess had snared George by pretending to be an animal-loving, outdoors-loving vegetarian, so the thoroughly pissed-off Jane decides to sabotage their wedding by putting together a slide show showing Tess eating meat, mishandling animals, etc. George breaks off the wedding to Tess, Jane finally confesses her feelings for him; they try kissing, but decide they don't 'feel right' for each other (apparently this is how kissing works), and that it's better if they just go their separate ways. Tess and Jane have a sisterly chat, and decide to forgive one another for their mutual cattiness. Jane decides she really wants to be with Kevin despite his exposé on her, and the two of them get married a year later. Hollywood ending, kinda, except for Tess (who is kind of washed up at the endâ??we learn she's sharing an apartment with roommates *EEGADS!!!*) but she was the antagonist, so I guess she had it coming. Finis.

Probably could have been about 20 minutes shorter, but, no harm, no foul. The acting was pretty good even if the characters weren't well developed, and the plot was well laid out. Some of the plot twists were kind of predictable, but it didn't really detract from the movie. The movie also seemed to be wanting to make some kind of didactic statement about the modern-day wedding industry, but it really didn't. Hey, it's a rom-com. We don't need profound Proustian rhetoric. 3 Stars!

Next, I'll be reviewing the sequel to "27 Dresses", "28 Days Later".